Molly Vorwerck, Special to USA TODAY
Published 8:26 p.m. ET April 10, 2019

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Protesters blocked one of Alabama's busiest roads and marched through the mall where police fatally shot a black man. Hoover police responding to a shooting killed Emantic Bradford Thanksgiving night. They later determined he wasn't the gunman. (Nov. 27)
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Americans searching for a rallying cry for the cause of black men and women killed in police-involved incidents have found inspiration in recent years in "If We Must Die," a poem by Jamaican writer Claude McKay penned 100 years ago.

From academic texts to The Atlantic, contemporary literature shows how McKay’s 1919 poem remains relevant, offering language to inspire courage in the face of racism. Director Ava DuVernay included the poem, recited by actors Don Cheadle and David Oyelowo, in a short film she created for the 2016 opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Written in response to the “Red Summer,” a period of lynchings and violence against blacks that swept the USA in 1919, McKay’s poem urges readers to be brave and fight back in the face of death.

Though the poem itself is well-known, and its writer one of the most significant figures of the Harlem Renaissance, the events that inspired it are less so.

In his book, "Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America," Cameron McWhirter suggests that Red Summer unfolded amid white anxieties about the social and economic mobility of African Americans following World War I.

National Guardsmen, called in by Chicago Mayor 'Big Bill' Thompson after three days of rioting in the summer of 1919, question an African American man. More than 100 years ago, Jamaican writer Claude McKay penned "If We Must Die" as a response to violence that year by whites against blacks. (Photo by Jun Fujita/Chicago History Museum/Getty Images)(Photo: Chicago History Museum, Getty Images)

As black veterans and Southerners migrated north seeking employment and housing in traditionally white communities, violence erupted. McWhirter says the vast majority of violence — including looting, arson, assaults and lynchings — was inflicted on black communities by racist whites.

“For the first time, whites felt threatened by African-American men with uniforms and medals,” McWhirter says. “And having simultaneously experienced more freedoms abroad and yet rampant discrimination as members of the U.S. military, African-American determination to fight back was stronger than ever.”

The first major event of Red Summer occurred in Chicago in July 1919 after a black teenager allegedly swam into a section of Lake Michigan reserved for whites only and was drowned by angry whites. During the ensuing 13 days of violence, 38 people died, more than 500 were injured and more than 1,000 black families were left homeless. The most violent and widespread events took place in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Elaine, Arkansas, but lynching and rioting spread across the country. From April to November 1919, more than 165 Americans died, with thousands more injured.

McWhirter says McKay, a recent immigrant to the USA and a porter with the Pennsylvania Railroad, was inspired to write "If We Must Die" after encounters with violent white mobs along the railroad line.

A crowd in front of a storefront with the sign Bank Real Estate during the 1919 Chicago Race Riots, which began when a white mob drowned a young black man who accidentally swam into the wrong area in Lake Michigan. More than 100 years ago, Jamaican writer Claude McKay penned "If We Must Die" as a response to violence that year by whites against blacks. (Photo by Chicago History Museum/Getty Images)(Photo: Chicago History Museum, Getty Images)

“Traveling from city to city and unable to gauge the attitude and temper of each one, we Negro railroad men were nervous,” McKay wrote in "A Long Way from Home," his 1938 autobiography. “We stuck together, some of us armed, going from the railroad station to our quarters. We stayed in our quarters all through the dreary ominous nights, for we never knew what was going to happen.”

David Krugler, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville and author of "1919, The Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought Back," suggests that what differentiated Red Summer from previous prolonged episodes of racist violence was the determination of African Americans to fight back.

“With the black male serviceman, you have these citizens risking their lives to preserve our nation’s democratic ideals, but who are denied equality,” Krugler says. “The Red Summer marks one of the first times they really fought back against this oppression.”

Eve Dunbar, an associate professor of English at Vassar College, says "If We Must Die" was McKay’s way of fighting back. “As we continue to face these conditions of oppression and police brutality, art provides an emotional and intellectual space for people to imagine otherwise.”

McWhirter agrees, suggesting that perhaps no other piece of literature so succinctly captures the struggle of racial injustice — then and now.

“McKay’s poem sort of crystallized a moment,” McWhirter says. “I would argue that this is also the case for the Black Lives Matter movement because the poem speaks to an assertion of a person’s individual human rights, that there is only so much one is willing to take.”